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GALA Visual Arts is a volunteer grass-roots organization dedicated to creating opportunities for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered visual artists to exhibit their work in a gallery setting. GALA - the name is an acronym for "Gay and Lesbian Artists"- was initially conceived during the spring of 1988 as a multi-disciplinary arts festival, in reaction to the fact that, in those days, there were few artistic outlets for celebrating gay pride in Philadelphia. Today, GALA Visual Arts is the last surviving part of the original festival, and is possibly the only organization in the Philadelphia tri-state area that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered visual artists.
Every year, since first emerging in 1988, GALA exhibitions have given visual artists from the LGBT community an opportunity to express their feelings, ideas, anger, hopes and fears. GALA exhibitions have allowed gay artists an uncensored public forum to react to such controversies as violence against LGBT and the fight for domestic partnership benefits. Newer generations of GALA artists are coming out to more accepting parents and families, and to a society that is more supportive towards them than it was to the founding members of GALA Visual Arts. However, as long as there is a need for a public forum for the LGBT aesthetic in artistic self-expression, GALA will continue to host exhibitions for LGBT artists.